


Role Model

by Truth



Category: Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Gen, General Unpleasantness, Genocide, Murder, Necromongers, Slavery, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyra wanted to be Jack, and got her wish.  Jack never wanted to be Kyra, or anyone other than herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Role Model

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catalinay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catalinay/gifts).



> [Role Model Cover Art by](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v332/dhaunea/AUBBriddick.png) Caersmane

"The skinny one, the boy. How much?" The raised voice was barely audible in the cacophony of the slave market. The shouts of the main auction nearly overwhelmed the crying and pleas for freedom that could be heard from the holding pens and individual bargaining had to be done at a shout.

Tenra Prime held the dubious distinction of being the current center of the burgeoning slave market in the colonial sector. An enormous planet with relatively low gravity, it was less than halfway through the terra-forming process. The demand for slave labor was high and snatching a few gullible idiots here and there to stash in cryosleep until they could be sold was nearly guaranteed profit. As a result, out-system traffic was high despite the relative isolation of the planet; balanced on the furthest edge of current expansion.

"Too much for one child with no muscle on his bones. It would cost more than that to feed him to a state where he'd be useful." The child in question had a chain around one ankle and no apparent interest in the proceedings. His attention was on the nearby ships, loading and unloading cargo – most of it human.

The outer colonies brought opportunity, cheap land and a life of grueling hardship. Outward expansion in the human sphere was slow due to the need for human habitable planets and necessary terra-forming slowed progress further. A mostly temperate planet with a year-round growing season was a valuable commodity and one that its colonists planned to exploit to the fullest possible extent. Despite the huge, terra-forming machines that still rumbled and groaned at their work and the heavy tractors and cultivators used by the larger farms, human labor remained the cheapest way to do business. Plentiful labor made the grueling work of ground-breaking and cultivation much faster and easier. Many of the larger farms utilized child labor as cheap, easy and disposable. The market price for a healthy young teenager was always high.

"I'm not looking for breeding stock, just a field hand. Good genetics mean shit, and I'm not paying extra." At this point, the bargaining was almost over. The boy in question had shifted his attention from the ships and was now staring up at the giant, rumbling machines used in the terra-forming process as they moved from the port slowly toward the frontier.

Haggling was common and, amongst several hundred transactions a day, the fate of a single boy who looked to be somewhere between twelve and fourteen wasn't worth noting. While slavery was frowned on by most planetary governments, in the outer planets it remained a thriving practice – especially when the offered stock was young and healthy. The slave markets were teeming with children and those who bought and sold them. He could've been anyone.

The boy hadn't been asked his name or age or planet of origin. As long as he could work, no one gave a damn. He was just another tool, one that didn't require expensive fuels to run or hard to find parts when he broke down. Loaded into a truck with two other kids, he didn't cry or ask questions, simply settling down to stare out of the reinforced window. He'd been here before, or a place like it. The others seemed to sense it, curling up together and muffling their sobs and confusion, leaving him to stare out at the strange landscape in peace.

The slowly cultivated edges of the wilderness on Tenra Prime could rightly be called the furthest point from civilization in known space and no one was more aware of that fact than the slaves forced to call it home. Workers who didn't move quite fast enough to keep one step ahead of the local fauna had to be replaced and got not even a gravestone to mark their passing. Even the indigenous insects were brutal and the farmers maintained a high level of cleanliness and hygiene amongst their workers. No one wanted an infestation of what passed for fleas or lice _here_.

"You'll be with the field teams. Work's hard and there's lots of it. You'll be picking fruit, weeding the new beds, planting the more delicate plants as they go in."

All the kids were hard workers, they had to be or their 'parents' wouldn't feed them. The planetary government knew they were slaves, all right, but as long as the farmers on the outskirts of the newly terraformed land paid their taxes and kept pushing the frontiers outward, they could get away with a lot.

"Work harder, eat better. That's the rules. Any questions?"

There were no questions.

The high proportion of young slaves to adult colonists remained static. Young slaves that could be worked hard and then sold or traded out for a new set were far cheaper than keeping adults food, housed, fed and paid even a pittance of a wage. At sixteen, the slaves would generally be sold again – for a substantial profit, if it could be implied they were fresh enough to bring the right price in the sex trade - or as bait for less savory activities if not. Some of them were lucky enough to be bought into apprenticeships. You never knew exactly what happened to those who got old enough to no longer be usefully shown as 'dependant minors' to the tax men, and they were always replaced fast enough.

The field teams, these new kids found, were broken into groups of 5-10, put under the care of whichever of them had been there longest, and watched over by a heavily armed adult foreman.

Kyra was the eldest of her small group and their nominal leader. She was proud of her position as ruler of a tiny empire of seven, proud of the way they looked up to her. The new kid, a skinny child with a self-conscious frown and a chip on his shoulder, would fall into line soon enough.

"There's your bunk. We get fed before we go out and when we get back and two small meals in the field. If the weather's hot, we get a break when the sun's overhead. Keep your mouth shut and do as you're told."

He'd obeyed silently, looking neither left nor right, and Kyra found herself satisfied with her assessment. A show of authority had been enough. He wouldn't be any trouble.

"New clothes when the old ones wear out. There's bins outside the showers. When we come in at night, you drop the clothes in the bin, stand under the water, take the clean ones from the shelf and head in before lockdown. Keep clean. There's penalties for bringing in dirt and bugs."

No questions, no attitude and Kyra was pleased. After Sef had been taken by one of the huge animals out in the high wheat, she'd been dreading having to break in a new kid. They usually spent the first few weeks weeping incessantly, but this one had obviously heard it before. Kyra got slightly better food than the others, for keeping them in line, and the whole team ate better when they reached their team quota. With luck, they might score enough with the next week's work to get better blankets.

They all worked harder for tangible rewards and it was amazing what a kid would do to be allowed the tiniest of comforts. Kyra kept a close eye on her crew and ruled them like a queen.

Her first indication that, perhaps, her reign was over came when she caught three of the other kids chattering excitedly beneath the fruit trees as they gathered up the windfalls. It was a drudge job, and any sort of cheer from those working was unusual. It was the subject of their conversation that halted her, just out of sight, listening.

" - with his forehead!"

"But then it killed him," Shef pointed out scornfully. "He can't have been that tough."

"There were four of them," Lis snapped back, holding up four fingers as if that would somehow validate the story. "They killed everyone else, after all. It'd only take one to kill you. A baby one!"

She should've stepped forward, should've told them to keep quiet and work harder. The more work they did over quota, the more food showed up at the noon meal and everyone always wanted more food, Instead, she found a tree just out of sight and settled in for some slow, quiet gathering of her own.

The new kid had a name, Jack, and his silence was apparently only assumed when in the presence of someone with apparent authority. Jack told stories, when the older kids were out of earshot. Stories of monsters in the dark, a brave ship captain, a renegade bounty hunter, an idealistic holy man and another monster – one that walked like a man. Jack called this monster Riddick, and even the little kids could hear that extra note of something in his voice when he talked about the killer who'd saved all their lives.

Jack never spoke of where he came from, or what had led him to stow away aboard the long-distance freight hauler. As far as any of the other kids could tell, his life had started with the crash of that same freighter and the escape of a notorious criminal on his way to a triple-max slam.

That was really all they knew about him, all seven of the other kids sharing the cramped box so deceptively termed 'bunkhouse'. They ranged in age from 12 to 16 and though Jack claimed he was 15, no one really believed it. He did his share of the work, though, and no one could call him a shirker.

All the stories came together to make just one, despite a few obviously missing pieces. After hearing them repeated a few times, Kyra thought she could tell which parts were true and which were invented to keep Jack's audience enthralled. The improbable, contentious romance between the captain of the freighter and the killer, for example. Kyra was fairly sure that one was entirely fiction.

Still, even second-hand, the stories were compelling, and Jack managed to eventually catch them all in his story. They would stay awake after the lights went out, listening to him whisper of things that hunted in darkness and a desperate attempt to survive.

Kyra might still be nominally in charge, given responsibilities by the adults and a few extra privileges for keeping the others in line, but it was clear that the kids wanted follow Jack. She couldn't understand it. Kyra prided herself on being bold, fearless – and she could hear the tension in Jack's voice when the boy spoke of waiting, alone, in a dark hole surrounded by monsters. Tension – and fear.

Jack was just a skinny little boy who lived on his nerves. He might work hard, might talk big, but he was just another slave. There was nothing special about him, about any of them. Only Kyra had bigger plans.

It took almost a full growing season for her to learn better.

When Lis was clowning around on one of the border fences and fell, it was Jack, white-faced and shaking, who forced the extruding bone of her leg back into place and held it until the adults could be summoned to help. He shook for a long time after Lis was carried away, hands skittering against his skin as he mopped away the blood. Kyra found it hard to reconcile the fear with Jack's instant, decisive action. It was new, beyond her experience, and she watched him more intently.

Two weeks later, on a night with no moonlight, Kyra snuck out of their bunkhouse. She wanted to test a theory and got as far as the edge of the walls that surrounded the bunkhouse compound. The walls were high and thick and served the dual purpose of keeping the very large, very carnivorous wildlife out as well as keeping the child slaves in. Everyone slept within high walls, the cities going so far as to put in deep moats with large, sharpened stakes at the bottom. While the wildlife was mostly nocturnal, even the tractors and cultivators were constructed on a huge scale to deter attacks and most had a smaller transport tucked up inside or attached to the back for rapid escapes.

Promise of safety or no, the walls were the first obstacle to escape. Stolen pliers in one hand, a coil of wiring pilfered from last week's fence repair hanging from her belt, she'd been reaching for the auxiliary junction box when a hand closed over her wrist and another over her mouth.

"Don't scream," a soft voice advised her grimly. "That thing's a dummy and it's rigged. If you open it, you'll get a really bad shock."

She hadn't been caught. Not by an adult. She wouldn't face punishment – and the sheer relief kept her from striking out at her temporary captor. It took another minute for the actual words to sink in.

Released abruptly, Kyra turned, pliers held out before her as if they'd provide her with some defense. Jack stared evenly back at her, scowling. Still softly, he said, "It's not connected to security, just to the electric wiring along the top."

"And how do you know that?" Jack made her feel stupid, put her on the defensive. Kyra hated it – hated him.

"I used my eyes." Jack gave her a scornful look. "Bed check in fifteen – better get back."

"You've never been out here at night." Night was the only time they were allowed inside the compound, and then only to sleep. Jack had never left their team's bunkhouse. She was sure of it.

"Who'd want to leave the compound at night? Unless they wanted to be food." He rolled his eyes at her and turned away.

Left alone in the dim, semi-light of the reflected floodlights outside the walls, Kyra fumed. That little weasel couldn't possibly have been out at night… but if he hadn't, how would he know when they made bed check? The adults never went into the bunkhouses, checking heat signatures from outside. If Jack had been outside during bed check, how had he avoided discovery? Her own knowledge of what went on after lockdown came from an event over a year ago. She'd been caught outside when bed check was carried out, and the punishment had been both public and unpleasant.

Jack had never been punished for anything, not since day one. For someone new to slave life on the farms of Tenra Prime, that was almost unheard of. Mistakes and missteps happened to everyone. Skinny, tension-filled Jack suddenly had several new dimensions to him and Kyra was no longer certain he wasn't the age that he claimed – or possibly even older.

Given so many new ideas, Kyra barely made it back to her own bunk before bed check. She did not sleep well and she found herself watching the lump across the room that was Jack, wondering.

The watching continued, and it was Kyra who discovered that Jack was hiding more than any of them could have guessed.

After a particularly long day in the fields, Jack had lingered in the required nightly shower longer than the allowed time. Kyra had gone to drag him out by one ear if necessary. If they weren't all present, no one got fed and Jack was well aware of that. When the flimsy privacy shield of the single occupied shower had been yanked aside, Kyra'd found her planned scolding stuck in her throat.

The thin, naked body did not belong to a boy of any description, and the look of shock was one she'd never seen before. She didn't have time to relish her discovery, the red rags that Jack had been scrubbing enough proof of his – _her_ gender.

The rags were the one the girls all used for their monthly courses, when they had them at all. They were fed enough to keep them working hard, more than they'd get most places, but the amount of physical stress often pushed the girls past it - probably how Jack had managed to hide her gender for so long.

Kyra had found herself hastily helping Jack scrub and while the younger girl scrambled into her clothes, returned the rags to the correct laundry container. They retreated to the evening meal in silence, not looking at each other and not exchanging a word.

Never one to let things rest, it was Kyra who ended up paired with Jack for the next day's work and the silence only lasted until they were out of easy earshot of the others.

"How?"

Jack shrugged, looking at the task at hand instead of at her partner. "Practice. People only see what they want to see."

"That and you're so skinny." Kyra was somewhat amazed by just how skinny Jack was. None of them carried any extra weight, but you could almost see Jack's bones, and it wasn't due to skimping at meals. No one had doubted that Jack was a boy. Everyone had assumed he was younger than he claimed, far younger. Kyra was sure now that Jack was at least her own age, if not older. The only meat on Jack's bones was muscle, and Kyra envied her that almost more than her ability to pass as a boy.

"I've always been skinny," Jack retorted, hunching her shoulders defensively and glaring back at Kyra. "Then I started getting tall and it just - stop looking at me like you're counting my ribs."

It was true. Shortly after her arrival, Jack had hit a growth spurt that had left her curled around herself in tears on more than one occasion, but she wasn't the only one.

Jack wouldn't be slated for the sex trade when the time came, not that some people didn't enjoy tall with whipcord over bone. Kyra knew there were better than even odds that her own life would follow that course and she wanted no part of it. So she kept Jack's secret, even helped to hide the other girl's gender on more than occasion – but it wasn't altruism and they both knew it.

Kyra looked out for number one, always. Some of the other kids had gods they'd pray to, but the only authority in Kyra's life was Kyra. Jack? Jack had something else going on behind those wide, dark eyes, something Kyra couldn't quite get hold of. That, more than anything, kept her interested in the other girl. More importantly than the rest, at least for Kyra's purposes, Jack had loyalty. As long as Kyra watched Jack's back, Jack would defend her in turn.

That assurance was beyond price.

They worked the fields sunrise to sunset. The work was broken by three short rest periods, two with a small meal to keep them going. The work was hard, even for adults, and the kids got just enough food for energy and to account for growing bodies. Sometimes they'd be joined by adults, if they had a new field to clear or needed the heavy equipment, but usually there was only one adult supervisor for an entire group. It was a large farm, and everyone had a job to do. Keeping full time guards would erase the small saving made by using slave labor in the first place. There was nowhere to run to, after all. Out here on the harsh frontier, any runaways would be caught the moment they had to enter a farm for shelter or food. There were no farms that didn't use slave labor and returning runaways was the neighborly thing to do.

It didn't keep some of the kids from trying. The punishment for running wasn't even terribly harsh. A minor beating, a few days in lock-up and then you were sold. No one knew where the runaways were sold _to_, but they were too valuable a commodity to kill or to maltreat too badly. That'd lower the resale value, and no one was in this to lose money.

Kyra had never attempted running away, mostly because she couldn't find a method that wouldn't result in immediate capture. She spent a lot of time thinking about it, and her investigation of the junction box had been only one of a number of such expeditions.

"Stop looking at me like that."

Jack didn't. She never did. When it was just the two of them, which happened rarely enough, Kyra would often turn to find Jack perched somewhere just… watching. She didn't like it, didn't like the quiet observation, didn't like the silent weight of what felt like judgment. Jack wouldn't stop looking, either, merely slip down from whatever perch she'd chosen and walk away.

She never turned her back.

Kyra didn't like that either and was careful not to let it show, but she held the unhappy suspicion that Jack knew anyway. Kyra was used to being the smart one, the tough one, the one that the others looked to for information and guidance. After just a few months, she was catching them glancing to Jack for confirmation every time she spoke. Kyra hated it, that sudden loss of the only power and control any of them had.

" – sure?"

"I'm sure." Jack turned, forcing Kyra to duck behind the nearest rock pile. "That way."

Her eavesdropping partially foiled, Kyra scrambled along the ground until she could again see Jack and Selsha. Jack's arm was dropping and both of them were staring away toward the mountains.

"So many worlds," Selsha was near tears, a shocking change from the older boy's normal stoic façade. "Every world so different, and it becomes harder to pray, to turn your face to God."

Kyra believed in no God but herself, and found the constant devotion of some of the other children ludicrous. It was a weakness, this need to rely on something outside yourself. She was aware of the struggle faced by those with stricter beliefs, to live up to their faith despite having no control over their lives – and she scorned them.

Jack shrugged, frowning. "God will hear you." She pointed again. "That way."

Selsha stole as much time as he could, Jack keeping watch in these few stolen moments that marked the end of their long day in the fields. Kyra more or less trapped in her chosen hiding place until the entire thing was over. As Selsha made his way back toward the vehicle that would take them to the compound for the night, Kyra looked up –

\- to find Jack perched atop the rock pile, looking back.

Defensively, she snapped, "You don't believe in that nonsense, do you?"

**Think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe? Think he could start out in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and not believe? Got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God... And I absolutely hate the fucker.**

Jack frowned down at her. "Does it matter what I believe?"

"… you picked a direction out of the air," Kyra said. "You _lied_ to him."

"God will hear him," Jack told her flatly, sliding down the rock pile. "It's what Selsha believes that matters – and that _is_ the right direction. If you know the coordinates of the planet you're standing on, it's easy enough to figure out."

"Why do you give a damn whether Selsha gets anyone to listen to his prayers?"

Jack didn't look back, heading after Selsha. "Maybe I don't."

As the weeks passed, bringing them closer and closer to harvest, she thought incessantly of how to get that control back. Once harvest was over, the older kids would be separated and shipped away to be resold, and it was her turn. She was old enough, she was due. Kyra needed a way out. Before she could begin making a plan, regaining her place among the others was essential.

"Show me how you do it."

She'd seen the surprise in Jack's face, swiftly hidden, but there were no questions, no evasions. Jack could be brutally direct when it suited her.

"Stop being afraid."

" – what?" Kyra wasn't afraid. She was brave. She was in control.

If there was one thing that Jack carried with her, it was fear. It shouldn't have surprised Kyra to realize that the fear was just another thing to distract other people from who Jack really was.

"I'm not afraid," she ground out, glaring at Jack.

"Stop lying to yourself, too."

Kyra didn't speak to Jack for a full day. Jack was still her best chance and Kyra was forced to acknowledge that much sooner than she was comfortable with. She finally drew her injured pride around herself and went back. Gritting her teeth, she asked, "Why? You're afraid - and don't try to tell me that you don't lie."

"I don't lie to myself." Jack didn't deny the rest of her accusations. "I know that fear is just another thing to slow you down. You can know it's there, you just have to learn to ignore it."

"How?"

She gave Kyra a thin, almost apologetic smile. "Practice."

Kyra took Jack seriously and she worked on realizing that she was afraid and then worked again on ignoring it. It was surprisingly difficult, and she caught herself more than once as she erected a shield of bravado, simply because she could feel Jack's scornful gaze.

"How is this different?" She asked one afternoon, as they were cleaning the baskets used to haul fresh vegetables. "From just being afraid?"

"Because once you know what a thing is, you can defeat it."

It shouldn't have surprised her that Jack had managed to make a knife, although the other girl did not offer to help her make one of her own. The danger of one weapon was more than enough, what with frequent searches and bed checks. Kyra had been caught and disciplined for contraband more than once, no matter how carefully she concealed her meager loot. She suspected that one of the other kids was playing informant, but couldn't prove anything.

Jack never got caught.

Kyra knew better than to suspect Jack of selling information in return for favors. With every layer that came to light, she realized just how little she knew about the other girl – and how much of what she thought she knew was wrong.

They would sneak out after everyone else was asleep and Jack would show her how to hold a knife, how to move silently and quickly and why you should never, ever hesitate.

"You always have to have a plan." Jack tended to talk when they worked together, softly and with her attention on the task at hand. "Once you have a plan, realize that something's going to go wrong. Keep your goal in mind and don't falter. Even if _everything_ goes south, don't think about it, don't second guess yourself. If you see a chance, take it. Keep moving forward and don't ever stop."

Kyra had nodded, reaching for the knife. Her attention was on the words, wondering where, exactly, Jack had first heard them. They had the rhythm of someone else's voice, and -

The impact of a fist to her stomach had her stumbling backward, shock leaving her open to another blow and the sweep of Jack's foot. She landed hard, arms belatedly coming up for defense, but Jack was apparently finished with her demonstration. The expression turned on Kyra was one of scorn.

"No one ever won a fight by letting the other guy take a free shot. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't do anything."

There was more to it. Jack's tension could be seen in how she held herself, knife still at the ready. Kyra didn't move to attack, didn't even pick herself up off the ground. Here there was weakness, and she was good with weakness.

"Who taught you that?"

"What makes you think I had to be taught?" Jack's voice held bravado that was obvious as a lie.

"Someone taught you that, or someone was there when you learned it. Who? What're you really moving toward, Jack? Or is it something you're moving away from?"

"I'm going to get out of here." Jack's chin came up as she glared at Kyra. "That's what I'm moving toward. I can't afford to let anything hold me back."

"Including me." Kyra could feel herself smiling and made no move to hide the expression. "Is that what this is about? Think I can't pull my own weight?"

"I think you'd stab just about anyone in the back to get what you want." Matter-of-fact. Jack wasn't judging. That wasn't her way.

"You're actually comfortable with that." Kyra said. She wasn't sure that she believed it. "You know I'd step on you to get where I need to go, and you're okay with it. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What makes you think I'd let you get away with it?"

After that, Kyra didn't ask any more questions. Her simmering anger and resentment made learning almost impossible and she had a great many bruises when she returned to her work. Jack didn't say anything to anyone or leave the area where she'd been supposedly working - but she didn't have the knife when she came back to the bunkhouse, and Kyra couldn't find it anywhere.

**

Four weeks later, as the new crops went in the ground, Kyra caught herself watching Jack work. The pale, skinny body still wasn't filling out, still looked so much like that of a much younger boy, but her skin was much, much darker and Kyra found herself wondering about the choice to be bald while working out in the heat. It made some sense, feeding into the visual masquerade, but it was more than that. Jack was very finicky about her baldness, rarely letting it get as far as stubble, and as cleanliness and short hair kept things like lice and fleas from coming into the bunkhouses, the adults indulged her.

Something about it was bothering Kyra, something she couldn't quite pin down. Glancing over again, she caught Jack looking back.

_He was tall. Huge. He loomed over everyone, even Johns, and they were the same height. He had muscles you could see clear through his clothes, and he always wore dark glasses. He was bald - shaved his head with a broken blade and engine lubricant...._

That was it. That had to be it. Something about Jack and the killer she loved to talk about. Jack - and Riddick.

She had a chance to ask Jack about it that night, but taking the direct approach wasn't Kyra's way.

"Who was Riddick? Who was he really? Your father? Your older brother?" Kyra let her voice drop as she gave Jack a speculative look. "A lover?"

Jack nearly struck her and it was that barely aborted movement which told Kyra all she needed to know. She stepped back, hastily, but could again feel a superior smile escaping her control. "You like him. You admire him... you wanted to be him."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I?" There was more to it, obviously more, but Kyra couldn't quite catch what it was. Something in the flatness of Jack's denial… which wasn't really a denial at all. "There's something there. Some connection. Everyone knows it, but why wouldn't you - "

Jack almost hid her flinch, but Kyra saw it anyway. "So I admired him. He saved our lives!"

"He's still alive!" Kyra nearly crowed her triumph, skipping rapidly backward another few steps as Jack's expression darkened. "He is! That's what you're hiding. He didn't die. _He_ flew you out of there, not that holy man. You know where he is!"

"If I knew where he was, I wouldn't be here would I?" Jack's voice was tight. "He left us the minute we got planet-side and I never saw him again."

"So you went looking for him?" Kyra could believe it. Jack was just loyal enough to think that would make sense. "A killer? An escaped convict who could kill monsters with his bare hands? Why?"

"Because he left. He left, and he was never coming back!"

It was closer to true vulnerability than anything else Kyra had seen on Jack's face, and she knew she'd found the other girl's weakness. "So you think he's going to rescue you? Come swooping down in a stolen ship and leap out to - "

"Don't be stupid! He wouldn't come back for me. He told me to stay with Imam! This is my fault, my problem, and if I can't get out of it - I don't ever want him to know I was stupid enough to get in!" Jack turned away and stormed into the sorting sheds, leaving Kyra with a broad, smug smile on her face. Now she knew what Jack was hiding. The only question was what, exactly, she could use it for.

Six months passed and Kyra used the time to worm as much information as she could out of Jack. What had really happened on that sun-blasted planet when the light was blocked? Why had Riddick come back? Why had he left in the first place? Why had he left again? Why was Jack so certain that he wouldn't come for her?

She didn't get much information, despite the frequency and number of questions. Jack was willing enough to repeat her stories of what had happened after their crash on that nameless planet, but her readiness to share on the subject of Riddick ended there.

"Weakness is something to be exploited and getting caught – that was weak. Stupid, too." That was Jack's last word on the entire business, despite repeated questions. Kyra eventually narrowed her questioning down to two and used them relentlessly.

What had Jack learned from Riddick? Why was she so certain that she could escape?

The last question was the one that Kyra was most interested in the answer to. If Jack could escape, then so could she. It seemed impossible on the face of it, to escape a border world with only a few ports, all of them tightly monitored. It was true that they were very busy ports, but on a planet that only had a tiny area terra-formed to support civilization, one with a large slave population, no one had yet managed to escape.

"No one that you know of. If Riddick can escape from a triple max slam, why the hell can't I get off a slave planet?" Jack said. She gave Kyra a scornful look. "You've been here, what, three years? Four? You haven't even managed to figure out how to get out of the compound."

Kyra had to admit the truth of that observation, but it didn't make her any less furious. "You've been here almost a year and I don't see you doing any better!"

"No, you don't see. That doesn't mean it isn't happening."

They fought often, bickering and sniping. Kyra was always careful to apologize, once she got her temper under control. She needed Jack, could see it more clearly with every passing day. She couldn't afford to let Jack decide that leaving Kyra behind was the smartest choice. Kyra had to learn how to do everything that Jack could and had to do it in the few minutes they could steal out in the fields every day.

Jack still managed to take her by surprise.

One oppressively hot afternoon, everything came apart. Struggling beneath the heat of the sun, the kids were spread out amongst the deep furrows of a new field. Their week's work was to clear away rocks and the tenacious roots of a few native plants that were particularly toxic to the crops they were trying to introduce. Heavy work gloves and protective clothing added to the discomfort and everyone kept their head down, working as swiftly as possible. Their adult supervisor had found a place to rest in the shade cast by the huge, mechanical plow that cut each giant furrow for their work.

Kyra was the only one close enough to see what actually happened. If not for her habit of keeping tabs on Jack, she might have missed it entirely. When she looked up, glancing around in what had become reflex, she was already working on the next root before realizing that there had been no sign of Jack.

She rose to her feet, pulling herself out of the furrow. Still no sign of Jack, and she looked back at where their supervisor was leaning sleepily in the shade. Shock held her perfectly still as Jack suddenly appeared between the enormous tires, behind the oblivious adult.

Jack's makeshift knife sunk deeply into the throat of the reclining adult, slicing sideways with an ugly, whistling _tear_. He didn't make much noise, thrashing a little as the bloodstained arm and knife disappeared between the giant, over-inflated wheels of his machine. The entire business only took a minute and Kyra was still staring as the machine started up. None of the other kids even glanced that way, used to the erratic starting and stopping of the plow as the supervisor kept his tilling close enough to watch them.

When the distinctive, heavy 'chunk' that marked the first separation of the control section from the rest of the machine sounded, Kyra finally jolted into action. She dropped her tools and pulled herself out of the deep furrow, feet digging into the recently turned earth as she ran for the machine at the fastest possible speed. She was halfway up the ladder when the door above her opened, and she climbed even faster.

Jack wouldn't wait for more than a few moments and they both knew it. This would be their only chance. With the death of the supervisor they couldn't afford to be caught. Their field was almost a mile from the compound, and by the time the other kids made it back to report what had happened here, they needed to be as far away as possible.

Kyra swung herself into the tiny cabin, jerking the door closed behind her and nearly falling out as Jack took off. "You know how to fly this thing?"

"I can fly an emergency shuttle. This is easier."

Apparently there were still a few things that Jack hadn't come clean on - such as flying lessons from Riddick. Kyra decided that she could live with that, given the circumstances. "Where are we going?"

The tiny flier rose up and up before Jack kicked at the accelerator and jerked back on the stick. "Phlosta."

"That's ... half a continent from here!"

"Ought to buy us enough time, then." Apparently the flier wasn't that much like an emergency shuttle as it jerked hard to one side. Jack managed to regain control without much difficulty. "They'll look for us at Kerosh or Darsu first."

"They can track the flier!" Kyra clung to the edge of the single seat, trying to figure out how Jack knew where they were going.

"Not below 2000 feet they can't. Don't you know anything?"

"Fuck you." Kyra did not appreciate being reminded of Jack's greater experience. "So what will we do in Phlosta?"

"Stow away on the first promising ship. By the time they get to Phlosta, we'll be out in the space lanes and by the time they figure out how we got there, we'll be on another planet. Free."

"Through port security? Past ship security? That's - "

"Easy. I've been doing it since I was about twelve," Jack said. "If you believe you're going to fail, you will. Shut up, relax and let me get us out of here."

Any other questions Kyra might have asked were derailed by the 'since I was about twelve' comment. "How old are you?"

"Dunno. Spent a lot of time in cryosleep. Seventeen?"

Kyra gave up on conversation after that.

Escaping the planet was not as easy as Jack had blithely promised. They had to abandon the flier in a fallow field some few miles from the port. Being underage and unaccompanied indicated 'escaped slave' as clearly as if they'd shouted it, and sneaking into the walled city took coordination and more time than Kyra was comfortable with.

Jack's chosen method was as simple as it was predictable. Hiding in the soil-crusted wheel well of one of the huge earth movers that went in and out of the maintenance depot was nauseating, but apparently unexpected. Motion-sickness was a new experience for Kyra, and being slowly and inexorably turned upside down and then right way up again was almost too much for her stomach.

"Stay out of sight. Find a beat-up, older freighter, one flying light. Get in, find an empty emergency pod and seal yourself in. They auto-wake about fifteen minutes earlier into approach than the crew pods and a full hour before passenger. Get out, hide - and get off the minute unloading's over. Security on an empty vessel is half that of a full one."

Kyra never saw Jack again. She blamed everything after that on the other girl. If only they'd stayed together. If only Jack had warned her that a merc company's only interest in travelers was their potential as merchandise.

If only she hadn't been so proud as to think that she had something to offer beyond the sale of her own body.

It was the only self-recrimination Kyra allowed herself. When she attempted an escape from her second, less savory round of slavery, she was caught and sent to one of the triple max slams from Jack's storytelling. That was Jack's fault too. She'd made it look so fucking easy....

Fear had her using Jack's name, but she couldn't pull it off the deception the way the other girl could. No one would really believe that Kyra's body, curves growing to prominence, belonged to a boy. Pride had her holding to that name, at least at first, but she eventually abandoned it for her own.

She was strong enough now to defend herself, to even carve herself something of a reputation, but Jack's name clung to her like an old tattoo – faded, but still visible beneath her skin.

When Riddick dropped into her life, she knew him instantly. He couldn't possibly be anyone else, and the shock of discovering that Jack's stories were all _true_ was enough to jolt her into action, to give her hope. He was looking for Jack – looking for _her_ and it was an opportunity she couldn't possibly let pass.

She never doubted that she could pull it off. After all, there was nothing Jack could do that she, Kyra, couldn't do _better_.

**

Jack chose a beaten-up freighter with a clean-cut crew. Harder to sneak on to than some of the others, she'd learned that competence was more important than 'easy' and that if she wanted to survive this trip, she needed a crew that knew their business.

Taking a chance as a fistfight broke out at another loading area across the way, she slipped into the cargo hold. Emergency life support pods were usually found in the back in the older models, allowing for crew to stay with the cargo in case of emergency separation in space. It was riskier than the emergency pods tucked away above in the passenger section, that was a lesson she'd never forget, but they were easier to get to.

Besides, what were the odds that she'd run into meteor showers and monsters twice in one lifetime?

She didn't spare a thought for Kyra. Why would she?

The trip passed without incident, a dreamless sleep that ended with a soft alarm, letting her know that the ship was soon to break atmosphere. She was awake, aware and ready when the hatch doors were opened by docking bay personnel, and darted for freedom as the customs inspectors lined up the crew for a lecture on what was and wasn't allowed out of the ship on this particular planet.

Luck was with her again, in that the ship had chosen another frontier planet as its next port of call. It wasn't as if the loading bays had huge departure signboards, just numbers. She managed to slip free of the actual loading area without attracting any particular attention and disappeared into the port itself in search of food, money and information.

Homesickness wasn't something Jack had ever been prone to, but over the past year she'd wanted very badly to go home. Home, in this instance, was defined as 'where Imam was', mostly by matter of elimination. She couldn't go where Riddick was - she had no way of knowing where he'd hidden himself and her last attempt had ended in ignominious failure.

"Fuckin' A." It was a phrase she'd grown fond of, and used a little more often than desirable. People expected that kind of language from someone who looked the way she did - or he did, depending upon the observer. She'd taught herself to walk like a teenaged boy, how to hold herself with the right sort of slouch for a kid with a chip on his shoulder and a ghost at his elbow.

A week passed as she wandered the dusty streets of the small port, learning more about the world where she found herself. She ran errands in exchange for the occasional meal, learning as much as she could about the planet where she'd found herself.

Kersat was the name of this planet, and it boasted a large number of basic shipping companies – and no slavery. Terra-forming had been funded by those same companies and the planet was nothing more than a hub for merchant vessels, most of them carrying non-perishable supplies for the outer colonies. Short term haulers, deep space ships, they all came to Kersat, but only a scant few made planet-fall. A huge, automated station hanging in orbit above handled all of the heavy transfers, making it possible for the outer colonies to get their goods more cheaply than by having them shipped directly. A glorified supply depot, it hung like a third moon in the sky, night and day.

Passage back to Helion Prime wasn't going to be possible, at least not immediately. The amount of money they were asking was obscene, even taking the longest, cheapest routes. Stowing away would just take her to another tiny planet where she'd have to find a new ship, and it'd take years to get back that way – if she was lucky.

The shipping companies were always looking for clerks, apprentices, stevedores and the like. If Jack wanted to get back to Helion Prime, she was going to have to find a method less likely to take her back to a life of slavery and less expensive than the going rate for passenger fare. Jack didn't lack for education, in a specialized way. Riddick and Imam had crammed as much information into her as they could in the long weeks before they'd been rescued. Although each man had been working with a different agenda, they'd both been grimly determined to cram as much information into her as possible. Imam had been concerned with her future – Riddick with her survival. Jack had soaked it all in as best she could. As a result, the job listings available were not as intimidating as they might have been.

Six weeks after her arrival on Kersat, Jack had narrowed her current options to five and she walked boldly into the offices of her first choice.

Heavy boots, shaved head, skinny and showing definite attitude, Jack had to make three attempts before convincing someone to give him a chance. Four basic tests later had 'Jack Fry' signing ten years of his life away to the Absertal Shipping Company as an apprentice pilot. By now, passing as a boy had gone from a matter of necessity to choice.

The dormitories for the apprentices were small and crowded, but the tiny bathrooms had locks on them and it was easier to maintain her disguise now than it had ever been before.  
She liked the freedom of it, and had yet to decide when, or if, she'd publicly resume her own gender. The ghosts of Carolyn and Shazza sometimes slipped through her dreams, making her fiercely proud of the encouragement and belief they'd had in her. Their strength could be hers – but they'd been adults. Until she had a place of her own and was in a position to defend it, she would continue to pass as a boy.

Helion Prime was still her goal, however roundabout. Jack hadn't decided whether stealing a ship would be the best way out or if simply waiting for an assignment that took her in the right direction would work better. It didn't matter. This was a step in the right direction, one that'd teach her another useful skill and allow her to feed herself without stealing. Plus, it was something that Carolyn had done... and Jack felt it an appropriate tribute.

An apprenticeship in any trade is, by definition, learning from the bottom up. Jack learned how to clean air filters, how to re-wire a malfunctioning alarm panel, how to jury-rig the toilet facilities when they cut out and the best way to clean up the mess afterward. She got all the work too messy, ugly or dirty for the regular crew, but it didn't bother her. She was here to learn, and she soaked up everything they had to teach her.

How to cheat successfully at poker was an early acquisition. How to smuggle various medicines into desperate, isolated colonies and get top dollar for them was one she discovered the trick to at the end of her first year. Smuggling human beings was one rarely indulged in, but for the right price some crews would look the other way or find something else for the customs officers to be interested in. It was an education in more than one way.

By the time she was spending her evenings on working astrophysics problems that, in real life, were always handled by the computer, Jack had learned a great deal more than simply how to steal a basic flier. She also knew that she didn't want to spend her life as a glorified freight hauler, but it was still the best way back to Helion Prime. Ticket prices had actually gone up while she worked, not that she was making enough money as an apprentice to do more than cover the cost of her uniforms and housing at the dormitory.

Rumors were filtering in, causing _all_ the travel prices to go up. Cargo as well as passenger shipping were adjusting their rates ever higher. Planets were going missing or discovered burned down to bedrock - or so the rumors went. Ships were heading out on regular routes and not coming back. People were dying.... The whispers spoke of huge, nameless ships and armored men, of darkness and death.

Jack wasn't sure if she believed the rumors or not, but monsters in the darkness whispered to something within that told her she couldn't stay here any longer. As the weeks passed, what were once vague whispers were now worried conferences at the company, with lists of missing ships, of ports and of entire planets that had simply vanished without so much as a call for help.

It was time to go. The information blackout was creeping closer and closer with every passing day. Jack did a little careful calculation, paid another apprentice to have a sudden bout of 'food poisoning' and took the next shuttle up to the station for immediate transfer out.

With a duffel over her shoulder containing the few possessions she'd acquired during her apprenticeship, she was halfway across the station from her assigned ship when alarms began to sound. Red lights flashing, deafening klaxons ringing, she joined everyone else in that section in racing to the nearest observation port.

Slipping out of the darkness, they looked like darts; sharpened weapons plunging inward, past the station to embed themselves in the planet's surface. The huge, ugly ships dragged an impossible viscous cloud of blackness in their wake, crawling across the heavy lines of the vessels and trailing behind them like unpleasant smoke. As they hit atmosphere, they began to shed tiny pieces of what first looked like debris. The concerted, directed movement of these secondary clouds revealed them to be yet more ships, most likely fighters.

Jack was one of the first to break away from the staring, frightened crowd. She ran, flat out, for the nearest loading bay and shoved her way in. Overturning a pallet of small boxes, she tripped. Ricocheting from the edge of a larger crate, she fell into the arms of one of the stevedores. "We have to leave," she gasped. "Leave now!"

"WHAT?" He leaned closer to hear what she was saying as the alarms became even louder.

She pointed at the open hatch, pushing at the man. He looked over her shoulder, eyes widening as more and more people came running down the passage, pushing and shoving and trampling each other as the urge to flee took over. Behind and over their shoulders, the continued impact with the planet could be clearly seen.

He grabbed Jack's arm, shoving her into the waiting ship. He was only half a step behind, pulling the hatch to and sealing it, the heavy door cutting off the scream of the alarms. Slamming his hand against the intercom, he shouted, "I don't know what's going on out there, but we need to get the fuck out of the system! Now!"

"I can see it! I can see it!" The woman's voice that responded was high with tension. "They're still coming!"

"Close! They're too close!"

"Screw departure clearance! GO!"

Jack was already halfway through the loading bay, aiming for somewhere that she could see what was going on. A moment later, her companion was hot on her heels.

The ship she found herself on was a passenger carrier, and once they stepped into the passenger area, there were two screens for outside viewing, both already crammed with people. Unlike the klaxons in the station, it was almost silent here. Someone was sobbing, but most were simply staring, unable to process what was going on.

As the ship pulled away from the station, snapping cables and hoses from the docking collar, more became visible. There was a collision of ships to port, all trying to flee at once and dooming themselves in their attempt at escape. True, personal horror came with an ugly, jarring impact. Everything spun, and most of the passengers ended up on their knees or flat on the floor. On the aft screen, the image of one of the huge vessels was clearly visible as it scraped against their tail before plunging into the station and tearing it in half.

Escaping atmosphere took with it clouds of waiting supplies, huge docking dollies, giant equipment that had been waiting for transport and bodies... so many bodies.

Uncaring, the ship continued inexorably forward on its plunge down toward the planet.

"Look at the size of those things! There's no way they'll be able to get back out of the gravity well."

"I heard that these guys have been around for a long time – they don't care about getting out, just destroying!"

"We're all going to die!"

The voice of the pilot broke in, still high and tight with tension. "Everyone get into a pod. Now. Lock everything down. I'm getting us out of here as fast as I can."

Jack fumbled her way to the nearest open pod, pulling it open and nearly falling inside.   
With fingers numb from shock, she closed the pod, but did not activate it, watching it slide closed as the people on the other side crawled or stumbled to their places. She could still hear someone crying, and someone else chanting 'what was that? what was that?' over and over.

A few of the activation lights went on, but most of the passengers, like Jack, were craning their necks in an attempt to watch the horror playing out on the screens across the way. There wasn't much to see and, eventually, the red lights began flicking on. Jack was one of the last to give in, pressing her hand to the activation switch while still searching for some kind of indication of what was going on down on the slowly shrinking planet. She closed her eyes, praying for senselessness and the comfort of cryosleep. She had questions, so many questions, but they could wait until the meager safety of distance was achieved.

The sound of another klaxon jerked her eyes open and she pushed at the door of her pod, nearly falling out onto the floor as her brain tried to catch up to the rest of her.

"We're only two days out," came the pilot's voice from the speaker. She sounded as though she hadn't slept at all. "I thought you should see this. All of you."

The small, round shape in the viewscreens had changed, slightly. Night was creeping across Kersat's face – or that's what Jack thought until she saw the slowly expanding blooms of fire moving across the planet in a bizarre display of deadly fireworks.

"No -!"

They watched the planet die, the silence broken only by the occasional gasp or cry. The final explosion was almost anticlimactic, marking the death of a planet already empty of life.

"That's why they didn't care about the gravity well… you don't have to escape what isn't there."

"Shut up!"

The pilot's voice sounded again. "Get back to the cryosleep pods, people. We seem to be the only ship out here, and I'm going to be pushing her to the limit to get us the hell away from – from _them_."

Numbly, they obeyed.

Three months, four days and two hours later, Jack woke with a start. The pod doors were opening, as were all the others she could see, and a tired voice spoke. "Welcome to the Niellsen System. Most of you had tickets for Mahyor Second but, understandably, we left before complete fueling. This was the best we could do. I suggest you gather your belongings, leave the ship and make new arrangements."

Angry muttering could be heard from one or two places, but the majority of the passengers seemed still to be suffering from the shock of what they'd seen.

"What about Kersat? What about our families?"

"We don't know. Please, just find your belongings and debark."

Jack found her duffel easily and was one of the first out of the ship. She turned, wanting a look at the damage, and did not stop. 360 degrees later she was still walking.

'Never look back.'

She'd never found the words more appropriate.

She didn't stop, making her way across the large port until she reached the offices emblazoned with the logo of her own company. Putting her papers on the desk of the officer in charge, she waited silently for a reaction.

"You came from Kersat? Where's the ship? What the hell's going on out there? Communication is dead and we haven't had a single damn ship from that direction for almost a week!"

"It's gone. All of it. It's all gone." Jack heard the crack in her own voice and struggled for control. "There were ships...."

"Fuck, would you look at this?" The call came from across the office and she turned, even as the officer before her rose to his feet. The captain of the ship that had brought her here had not wasted any time. Her first act had apparently been to send her recording of events at Kersat to the local news media.

The footage was silent, and not a sound was to be heard in the office as it played to an end. "I want - I want to ship out. Again. Now." Jack's voice rose with every word and she forced it back under control as best she could.

"You and me both, kid."

It took two weeks to get a berth on one of the company's outgoing vessels. A berth for an apprentice was normally allotted depending on how much time for teaching and how much space would be available on the voyage. Now, every ship was crammed to capacity with travelers, and Jack had to wait for space.

Four systems later, she relaxed enough to actually leave the loading area and the temporary housing available for crews in transit. She needed to get out and breathe, to see the news and hear whatever she could about the tragedy she'd fled.

Two hours after she checked out with the company, she was staring up at the sky and trying out every curse she knew. The once-blue sky was boiling with a strange, viscous darkness and there was a long, low rumble in the air that had nothing to do with thunder.

"I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it!"

She began running, trying to remember the closest possible place to catch a ride back to the port, knowing that it was already too late but unable to simply stare up at the sky and wait for the horror that was about to arrive.

'Never look back.'

The crowds eventually began to shift, turning from frozen, horrified shock to active flight. It made Jack's chosen course harder, as she ran against the frantic flow of people. She'd made it a habit to keep her bag with her, the bare necessities kept always slung over her shoulder. It was slowing her down, catching now and then against other people, but without any idea of what she was running into, she couldn't risk losing something that she might need.

The first wave of armored soldiers began falling from the sky barely fifteen minutes later, and the heavy impact of the huge ship that cracked the planet's surface on the other side of the port knocked her off her feet. Breath driven from her lungs, shoulder and arm throbbing from the impact with the ground, she still struggled to her feet.

"I have to live. I have to live. I can't die like this!" Jack's mind was running at a furious pace, planning, calculating. To survive, she would have to get off the planet. Somehow, she had to get off the damn planet!

But how?

There was only one possible option. Covered with dust from the nearby impact, she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. She'd been stowing away on ships for years and now she knew even more about them. She could do it. She would do it. How hard could it be?

Bodies lay in the streets, some of them in uniforms, some in heavy black armor. This wasn't a battle but a slaughter and the majority of the bodies were of civilians who had not been safely undercover when the darkness first began to crawl across the sky.

Jack did her best to ignore them all, picking her way through the bodies and the rubble. She was trying to avoid everyone, both the authorities trying to get people under shelter and out of sight and the black armored killers systematically killing anyone they found in the streets. She had to take cover every few minutes, in doorways or inside what was left of street-market stands. Strangely, the invaders weren't knocking down doors or invading homes, limiting themselves to death in the streets. It made her progression toward the looming black monolith difficult, but far easier than it could have been.

Hiding in a doorway at the sound of armored feet, she watched a couple turn from an alley into the street and run a short distance before falling down among the corpses. It was a risky venture and one she hadn't yet had to try herself. She held her breath, watching, as the small patrol drew nearer.

It was unpleasant to watch them move, a strange sort of unison that kept to perfect lockstep when ordinary soldiers might've stumbled or had to pick their way through the bodies. There was someone within the formation who didn't quite fit, and Jack found herself stretching a little, trying to see through the moving bodies to whatever was in the center.

The opportunity was lost when the patrol came to a silent halt some three meters from the bodies, living and dead, where the couple had chosen to hide in plain view. A man broke away from the formation, a sword in his hand, and swung it sharply downward. There was a scream as the blood-spattered survivor of the pair rose to her feet and attempted to run, but she got only a few feet before the same sword buried itself in her side, bringing her down.

Jack looked away from the continued, wet splintering sounds.

By the time she got her nausea under control and felt again able to look out at the street, the squad was gone. She was far more careful as she moved from doorway to doorway, but moved a little faster. There was only one safe place now.

The second time she saw one of the roving squads up close, her choice of shelters was limited. Without time to be choosy, she took cover in a nearby doorway, huddled as far back in the shadows as she could. The local habit of columns and porticos gave her at least minimal cover as a small, moving battle overtook her and filled the square she'd been about to cross.

The encounter was swift and ugly, the defenders managing to kill the invaders only to be mown down themselves a few seconds later by reinforcements in black armor. Jack watched with fascinated revulsion as they picked slowly through the bodies, dispatching any survivors. This time, she got a good view of the creature directing them to those still living, and she clamped both hands firmly over her own mouth as it passed through the square.

It might have been human once, but what was left reminded her of nothing so much as an excavated corpse. A faint smell of rot hung in the air to reinforce that impression. She remained silent and shaking for too long after the square had emptied, wondering just how it could tell the living from the recently dead and not certain she wanted to find out.

Desperation sent her out into the open, running again toward the ship that would help destroy this world. Her travel became easier the closer she came. The squads of black armored men were all heading away, at high speed and with a narrow focus. She saw no more of the hunched, creeping things that frightened her so badly, and that left her free to concentrate on disguise.

It was easy to find a body about her height, harder to find any with her build. Clothing from a few other bodies helped to bulk her up, and she tried not to think about the patches of wet that slid unpleasantly against her skin. Clothed appropriately, she simply fell in behind a returning squad that was missing several members and followed them directly into the ship.

**

The inside of the black ship was cool and dry and smelled unpleasantly like a cargo chamber that had been left sealed for too long with something growing in the air filters. It took surprisingly little effort to separate from the squad she'd come in with, and she watched them trot rapidly across the open chamber inside the huge loading bay and disappear down a passage. Moving quickly, she chose a second passage and set out to explore.

Ten hours passed before movement told her that the ship was preparing to launch and she'd discovered a number of truly disheartening things about her involuntary hosts. The first was a surprising lack of food and water on-board. Not that cryosleep left you needing large meals or a huge supply of foodstuffs, but with the sheer number of soldiers that she'd seen boarding the vessel, surely they must have some sort of stores?

Apparently not, and that was somewhat disturbing on several levels.

The second was that there were definite training areas, scored with the marks of various hand-to-hand weapons... but she'd yet to see any of these soldiers with a gun, or even without their helmets. She was starting to worry that they were some sort of robots with a lack of long-distance vision.

The third thing to disturb her was the active presence of several of the hunched and creeping _things_, but thus far she'd been careful to stay out of their line of sight.

Most disturbingly, she could not find any sort of escape shuttle or command deck. Her original, blithe plan of stowing away until she could find a ship to steal seemed doomed to an early and unpleasant death. There were large troop transports secured in various drop-bays, but the one she was able to steal aboard and examine also appeared to lack any sort of command deck and she was growing more uneasy by the minute.

Who were these people?

The ship was stuffed with cryochambers, the pods stacked upon racks that were almost entirely filled by the time the ship took off. Jack found one for herself in a mostly empty room far to the end of a row, but was loathe to use it. There were still people up and about, doing... military type things. The chance of discovery was too high.

By the end of the fourth day, as moving around in the tight quarters of a vessel that seemed more designed for the storage of bodies than of the transport of living beings, Jack gave in to the inevitable and chose cryosleep as the least dangerous option.

Waking was abrupt and unpleasant, leaving her stumbling from her pod and into hiding at the first possible opportunity. The soldiers took themselves to the transport ships or into formations in the large, empty area by the loading bay hatch. Jack watched them from a precarious perch that was part of some kind of cooling system for the hydraulics of the door. There were no less than twenty of the creeping things spread out amongst the assembled soldiers and each had some sort of... leash? It was hard to tell from above.

She resolved again to steer clear of them, whatever they were.

Landing, despite the shockwave she remembered from the last time, was surprisingly gentle – at least from inside the ship. She watched as the entire contingent poured from the ship like so many invading ants and felt a little sick to her stomach, knowing what was in store for the inhabitants of this planet - whichever it happened to be.

Jack waited only long enough to be certain that the majority of the occupants of the ship were gone before slipping downward to the floor and heading out herself. She moved rapidly and with as much assurance as she could muster, searching for any alternative to sleeping amongst these murderous freaks.

This time, the ugly monolith was not alone. There were two others fairly close by and the troop transports swung rapidly overhead, choking the space between them. The invaders were marching steadily into the nearby metropolis and Jack took a good long look at the other ships.

The ship directly across from her own was almost identical. Tall, slightly conical and with enormous, distorted carvings near the top, it was hideous. She couldn't make out exactly what the carvings were supposed to be – they were too far away and she was beneath them. The last ship, however, while exhibiting a similar design, was still surrounded by soldiers.

Eventually, the huge hatch door slid slowly upward, revealing a large number of black-clad people who were not wearing any armor. They strolled outward as stairs unfolded, looking about like rich tourists.

Jack caught herself holding her breath. People like that wouldn't sleep in heavy, utilitarian pod racks. They wouldn't be satisfied with stale, dry rations. They wouldn't keep cryopods that resembled heavy, dark coffins. _That_ was the ship that she needed to be on.

The only question was how.

Her disguise was good enough to hold up in a crowd, barely, but the approach to that particular ship had guards. A lone soldier approaching would stand out like a sore thumb. There must be a way. She would just have to find it.

She continued to watch as troop movement continued, waiting as the hours passed until something changed in the idly observing group across the way. A tall man with a long cape and a group of attendants swept down the steps and away toward the crumbling walls of the enormous city in the distance. She found herself holding her breath as they passed her, despite the huge distance between them. There was something deeply unsettling about the man, and she could've sworn he paused as he passed her position.  
When she recovered herself enough to look back at the ship he'd come from, she found that most of the guards had vanished, as had about half of the casual on-lookers.

Time passed and people came and went, soldiers and the others, but while traffic came into and out of the ship, it was always the same groups. No one approached from the other ships, unless on official business or accompanied by a squad of soldiers. If she could somehow attach herself to one of those...?

Her planning and observation were interrupted by a set of troop carriers in the sky, moving slowly toward the ships and escorting a fairly large crowd beneath. The tall man with the cape had returned and brought a selection of shell-shocked locals with him. Jack hadn't seen any 'normal' people since first stowing away and watched with fascination as the entire group disappeared into the ship.

Perhaps... perhaps there was a way in. If only she could find a way to insert herself into that group. Then again, perhaps the survivors were being taken for imprisonment and execution, or some bizarre breeding program or maybe, and she found herself swallowing hard, this was the food source she hadn't been able to find.

Whatever was going on, she was too late to make an escape from the ship this time and her opportunity to gain access to the other ship had passed. She would have to make time to think, and she retreated to her cryopod to do just that.

**

When the ships next touched down, she had a plan and was ready to put it into action. The ship that she wanted was not immediately visible, but she was ready for that, too.

She left her ship with one of the rapidly moving squads, peeling off in the initial confusion and attaching herself to another group. She switched from group to group, careful to avoid those accompanied by the creeping dead things, and finally found herself standing guard over a frightened group of survivors.

The sweeping entrance of an imposing, armored man brought a sick feeling of dread to the entire assemblage. Across a wide room she could still feel his presence like a blow to the gut and she was certain it was the man she'd seen before. He carried some of the horror from the city's ravaged streets with him, and it drifted at his heels like the long, black cloak that fell from his armored shoulders. Jack kept her spine straight and shoulders back, but it took an effort that left her feeling sick to her stomach.

He did not speak, which startled her, leaving the melodramatic speech-making to another man – one she hadn't even noticed in his train. The dramatics distracted her, at first, from the message being declaimed before her.

" - life is antagonistic to the natural state."

Then she wanted to be sick.

The surprised and frightened murmurs from the crowd, the occasional outburst; she tuned them out, trying to force away the message of death and genocide. Death. Death and a sort of gruesome half-life and how could _anyone_ think that becoming one of these - these _creatures_ was an improvement?

Jack didn't want to die. She wanted to live with a passion and desperation that was startling. She couldn't imagine choosing to follow someone whose stated declaration was to kill everyone in the universe before dying themselves. A slight delay in coming to the end of it all couldn't possibly be worth going through whatever it was that turned strong men into automatons that only lived to slaughter – or die in the process.

She did not want to die, even only partially. More, she did not want any part of this slaughter, justified as 'cleansing' and only the knowledge that she would die if she gave herself away kept her standing where she was, silent amidst the ranks as she watched desperation and fear win out in the group facing the man she now knew was called their Lord Marshal. In ones and twos they fell to their knees and she could feel his satisfaction, his gloating. That, more than anything, made her swallow hard against the gorge rising in her throat.

No one who gloated could possibly be a true holy messenger. She had her memories of Imam's selfless giving to shield her from that. These _Necromongers_ were worse even than the creatures in the darkness. They, at least, had honest hunger to drive their deprivations. Like those creatures, _these_ monsters would end up destroying everything living in their path – and then they themselves would sink into the darkness, hopefully never to return.

Nausea tugged at her as she helped to herd the numbed survivors, and she was no longer certain that she wanted to travel with these people. If there were no way off their ship, perhaps it would be better to stay here and die with the planet. Better that than end up like them, one of them, a part of them. Her stomach turned again.

She had a way onto that massive ship, just as she'd wanted. What she'd be able to do once she got there was questionable, but much as the thought of possibly getting caught would haunt her nightmares, it was better than simply bowing her head and letting death come to her, like the cattle which the humans of this planet had become. Life was to be lived, not endured. It took most of the long walk back to the ship in order to regain her composure and she was thankful for the helmet that hid most of her face.

Someone in the group of survivors was sobbing, exhausted and heart-broken. Jack tried hard not to think about the fact that there was no one in the group younger than thirty.

There _would_ be a way to escape. She could steal one of the tiny fighters, any vessel that could take her far enough away to get picked up by another ship. She had to keep believing that there was a way out.

The nightmarish quality of the day was enhanced by the harsh lines and unrelieved black of the armor, the ships and the very attitude of the people around her. The long, defeated march toward what must be the flagship of this fleet of death helped to wear down the wills of the prisoners further. Perversely, Jack found that every step was adding to her anger.

"Welcome to the Basilica!" The continued melodrama and ritual were getting on her nerves. She fought to keep her eyes straight ahead and expression solemn. "Here is where you will reap the benefits of your conversion, becoming a true follower of our Lord Marshal!"

In sharp contrast to the outside of the great ships, the inside of this one was flushed with a soft, gentle light. There were curves to the architecture and, instead of a holding bay of the sort she had seen on the last ship, there was a giant hall. The arching ceiling, the heavy throne and the huge, ugly sculptures were all things that seemed almost jarringly out of place on a ship, even a flagship. Small groups of finely dressed men and women stood here and there, glancing at the new arrivals without curiosity before continuing with their conversations.

Jack found herself wondering grimly what sort of people preached a life within death and yet surrounded themselves with grandeur and surroundings that obviously cost either money or the lives of a great many craftsman. As they crossed the end of the light-flushed hall, she caught a glimpse of one of the creeping things and its handler. She managed to keep the, -the _converts_ between it and herself, but the knowledge of its presence was enough to send a sharp chill down her spine. Instead of fear, the chill brought another surge of sharp, determined anger.

These creatures would not get the better of her.

She eventually managed to detach herself from the group, but not before watching as the first convert was hooked up to the machine that would make them a Necromonger. To see them hanging in endless rows, watch the long needles slide toward unprotected throats –

With a carefully hidden shudder, she realized that there was no relief to be found in finally having a name for these monstrous destroyers. Fear of the unknown was a terrible thing, but the reality of these creatures and their chosen, sacred mission was just as bad as the things her imagination had dredged up to torment her.

Walking steadily away, she pushed the memory from her mind. To hide on this ship would be far easier than the last. The construction was bizarre, more like a colonial house of worship than a ship of any kind, and there were actual living spaces. There were real kitchens too, despite a dearth of food choices. Food was apparently fuel and nothing more. Supplies were sufficient that she could steal enough to get by without detection. This was a very good thing, as she had yet to see a single cryopod.

Ducking, dodging and attempting to look as though belonged in the arched and unnecessarily roomy corridors, Jack eventually managed to find shelter in a small, abandoned cubby. She could live here, or at least survive. If she could remain hidden long enough, surely she could find a way to escape while the fleet was in transit to the next, doomed planet. On a ship so different from the last, surely there would be some provision for escape in case of disaster?

Her mind went back to the scene in the tiny market square, seeing again the complete, blind devotion on the faces of the half-dead. They'd _chosen_ to be dead, after all. Perhaps escape wasn't a priority.

She took that gloomy thought with her into sleep.

Jack slept through the death of that planet. She'd never even learned its name. She didn't mourn it, or her own indifference to its inevitable fate. She had survival to deal with, and she couldn't let anything else distract her from that. That's how you ended up dead and, after today's demonstration, it was something she wished to avoid with a hungry passion that she'd never suspected.

Even in the darkness of a tiny cave, alone with a holy man who'd taught her how to pray so she wouldn't think about the monsters hungering outside, she'd only been afraid of dying. She'd never before realized that living was so much more than not dying.

She woke, eventually, with a renewed determination. These half-dead things pretending   
to be human weren't smarter than she was. They were frightening, but she'd seen monsters before. All she really needed to do was stay out of sight and keep searching for a way out. There was always a way out.

"I just have to find it." Before they found her.

Revulsion drove her, and she learned all the nooks and crannies and back passages of the Basilica. There were a surprising number of them, tucked here and there amidst the wasted space of a tiny citadel that had never been meant to travel through space. The weight and age of the construction convinced her of that. These people had built a ship _around_ an existing building, and the sheer cost of it was enough to stagger her. Their ship paid for this particular vanity in fuel, in wasted space, in weight….

Their blind folly was her gain. Jack found and explored every possible hiding place, choosing those most likely to remain undisturbed and beginning to stockpile non-perishable foods and the occasional weapon. She'd need supplies when she escaped.

It'd be embarrassing to starve to death or die of thirst after successfully stealing a ship and making her getaway.

Moving through this new ship was a nervous business. Whatever social structure these people had involved a great deal of movement. People strolled or marched down the passages, pausing to exchange a few words at random and then move on. Some kept to a schedule, but others seemed to have time to spare. No one slept much and eating seemed purely a habit, kept alive by social tradition. That made raiding the kitchens far easier, but Jack had to stay hidden until she learned just what drove these people.

Other than a nearly pathological fixation on death, which made no sense at all. If they liked death so much, why didn't they just get on with it?

Unlike the soldiers, in their cramped cryo-pods, these people had fine clothes, room in which to wander and time to waste. The divide between the converts and the people here in the Basilica reminded her strongly of that in the farms she'd escaped not so long ago. The glory of conversion seemed more a recruitment tool for zombie-like warriors to whom final death probably _would_ seem like heaven in comparison.

After a few weeks, Jack discovered that her dislike of the Necromongers was actually growing. It was difficult to imagine feelings beyond those inspired by the destruction of entire planetary populations, but they did exist. Devoted entirely to their Lord Marshal and the concept of an Underverse she still wasn't sure she understood, their society was balanced almost entirely on war.

The hardest thing to become accustomed to in the shadowed halls of the Basilica were the voices. The constant, half-crazed whispering of the creatures known as the Quasi-Dead sometimes seemed to fill the air, sometimes only registered as tiny clawed hands, dragging at the edge of your awareness. It was freaky, and sometimes it kept Jack awake long after desperately needed sleep drove her to whatever hiding place was currently her bed.

Here, at least, there were ships to be stolen. That discovery had been almost shocking and entirely euphoric. The tiny scouting ships were packed into the outer passages of the ship which held the Basilica, but they weren't easy to get to. She'd yet to get close enough for a thorough examination, much less get inside. They were an odd shape, nothing she'd ever seen before, but she was sure she'd be able to figure something out once she got a look at the controls.

In the meantime she hid and she stockpiled and she observed.

Without the comforting emptiness of cryosleep, she eventually grew bored. The boredom overcame her revulsion and she began to dig a little deeper in her investigations. The women of the Necromongers seemed to retain more personality than the men, perhaps because they weren't truly allowed to be a part of the culture that they'd embraced along with the needles driven into their skin. There was sometimes great amusement to be found in eavesdropping on the more private conversations of the women and sometimes even the men.

Jack knew a lot of women, but few who'd allow themselves to be put into the position that most women were held by the Necromongers. A woman was an adjunct to her husband, who was almost always a warrior. She had no place or purpose beyond that of the man she followed, and that made Jack want to vomit almost as badly as the creeping things that she'd learned were called Lensors.

She snooped and she pried and she listened, propped up in the overly decorative archways above the heads of the Necromonger elite as they strolled and they gossiped. The subtle poison that underlay every word and gesture was not unlike a candy she'd heard of once - insects sealed in chocolate. Pleasant enough to look at, but not something you'd ever want to actually eat.

Jack passed the time by assigning planets and histories to the living dead who walked the halls of the Basilica. The short, pale woman with the wild black hair had once been an accountant with a very boring husband. The tall, fierce general with the dark skin had run a cleaning service on a desert planet. The angry warrior with the bizarre haircut had been a teacher in a jungle and his wife -

His wife was something else, and Jack found herself watching the beautiful, proud woman who managed to always be separate, even in a crowd. In a world of black, she wore gold or ivory. She held her chin up and she met the eyes of the men. She was so perfectly correct in public, but there was something wild there, something tied to fear.

She reminded Jack of Kyra, and that in itself was interesting enough to keep Jack watching.

Her name - Jack had no idea what her name really was. They all called her 'Dame Vaako', even her husband, but Vaako was _his_ name, and Jack could see the tiny wounds inflicted every time someone called her by the name that was not her own. There was more going on here than she knew, and Dame Vaako might prove to be useful.

Jack's favorite perch became a hollow above the fluted arch that led to the chambers assigned Lord Vaako and his wife. It wasn't the most comfortable of resting places, but the entertainment was more than worth the lack of comfort. He was seldom present, leaving Dame Vaako to her own devices. Despite her quiet, controlled anger and her perfect public mask, Dame Vaako seemed to have few actual vices. She held herself apart, deliberately, Jack decided, and the few attempts by other men to worm their way into her bedchamber were met with scorn and resounding defeat.

No matter her fury at her current circumstances and her decidedly rebellious depths, Dame Vaako's loyalty to her husband was apparently firm. It took Jack some weeks to discover that loyalty was, perhaps, not the correct word. Vaako was decidedly the tool of his wife's ambition, for all that she seemed to have a decided fondness for him.

That and a few truly disturbing mutual kinks that Jack found herself wishing she'd never been exposed to. It wasn't enough to put her off her eavesdropping. Until she managed to get to whatever small craft were berthed on this ship, she had little else with which to occupy her time.

The discovery that Dame Vaako often talked to herself, perhaps because no one else would listen, sparked an idea. With all the whispers in the air, who would notice one more? Who would know that it wasn't the nightmare visions of the Quasi-Dead, making themselves felt in the darkness?

Testing that theory nearly led to discovery and capture. Choosing a moment when Dame Vaako was alone in her chambers, Jack accidentally misjudged the volume and tone of her initial whispers. Whatever else she might be, Lord Vaako's decorative wife was lethal. Jack wasn't sure where in her tight outfit Dame Vaako had managed to hide a knife almost as long as her forearm, but it was there in her hand when she whirled, looking for the source of Jack's injudicious whisper.

Pressing herself against the decorative carvings, Jack had forced herself to stay calm. Eventually, the knife was placed on Dame Vaako's dressing table – but not before the lady had searched every inch of her quarters. Yet another reason to be grateful for the archaic structure carried in within this ship. Nowhere else could a whisper be carried so perfectly without actually having been within the room. Jack was well aware that this little quirk was probably all that had saved her from a very nasty fight – and one which she was suddenly not so certain she would've been able to win.

Jack was more careful the second time, waiting until Dame Vaako was both alone and in a corridor that counted more as public space than her first, clumsy venture in the woman's own quarters.

The whisper was soft and thready, carefully timed and pitched.

'_Why shouldn't it be you?_'

**

The whispers continued, timed to coincide with disappointment, with anger and with frustration.

'_You could make him Lord Marshal. He should be Lord Marshal.'_

'You deserve this.'

'The Lord Marshal is weak.'

'He is weak.'

'He doesn't deserve this.'

'You deserve a voice.'

'You could do better.'

It almost became a game, figuring out just how to tweak Dame Vaako's fears and frustrations, her ambition and her drive. A revolution, even a failed one, would cause more than enough chaos for Jack to make her escape. The activity helped distract her from her continued failure to get into the scout ships that remained her best chance at breaking free.

Every time she got close enough to make a try for the carefully racked ships, a Lensor would pass, handler close behind. If it wasn't a Lensor, it was a patrolling squad of men and twice now she'd been close, so _close_ and the figure between her and the entrance to the ship racks had been the tall, eerie creature that was the Lord Marshal himself.

Something about the man, the _creature_, unsettled her badly, even more badly than the Quasi-Dead and their constant whispering. Once or twice she'd caught herself actually listening to their whispers, certain that they'd said her name, and only pulling herself free with an effort.

Sometimes she was almost certain that the Lord Marshal knew she was there, or would know if she wasn't very, very careful. Whenever he appeared, she abandoned her activities, simply waiting silently until he moved on. The reminder of his presence was the best possible goad to her desire to escape – to get as far away as possible from whatever he was.

Her game with Dame Vaako ceased being a game the night she overheard their current destination, the next planet slated for cleansing.

Helion Prime.

It took her four days of careful, constant work to finally get into the racks amongst the scout ships and four minutes to discover why she would never be able to steal one. Like the other ships, there was no control console, no cryopods and, in this case, no actual cabin. She had enough information by this time to know why. The scout ships, like the transports, were controlled and powered by the Quasi-Dead and there was no way to steal one.

She was well and truly trapped, an unwilling front row witness to the destruction of the planet she had briefly called home and the certain death of one of only two living people to ever give a damn about her.

Maybe if she pushed Dame Vaako a little harder, managed to escape from the ship to _warn_ Imam, maybe….

Reality was harsh and she was enough of a realist to know that her hopes were futile. Too little. Too late. She wouldn't be able to hide Imam, even if she found him. She had no idea if they had landed in the correct city, given an entire planet to choose from. If it were, and if she somehow managed to get them both through the carnage that was taking place in the city….

She was having enough trouble simply hiding herself.

Curled up in her hiding place, Jack cried a little, for the first time in a long time, and her tears were bitter. If she hadn't run away, if she hadn't chased the stupid, impossible dream of finding Riddick, maybe….

Too many ifs. Too many maybes, and maybe solved nothing.

When the Necromonger ships descended on Helion Prime, Jack stayed hidden. Head in her hands, concealed amongst the elaborate carvings in the Basilica, she remained alone in the silence of the deserted halls, her only company the endless whispering of the Quasi-Dead. She remained there, inconsolable with grief and hatred as the Lord Marshal returned with his converts, unwilling to go – unwilling to see.

It would be far worse to see Imam with those about to become Necromongers than it was to simply imagine him dead.

'**_KILL THE RIDDICK!_**'

The entire Basilica heard that scream and Jack, jerked from her unhappy imaginings, nearly fell from her hidden perch entirely. She forgot herself so much as to drop down into the corridor, staring wildly around in hopes of seeing something, anything, and shouting, "Riddick!"

Her voice was lost in the sudden shouting and sounds of carnage from somewhere further within. By the time she reached the chambers of the Quasi-Dead, still in the process of pulling her improved disguise together, he was gone.

But Riddick had been here. The entire Basilica was murmuring with shock at the defiance and - Riddick had _escaped_. Maybe he'd known, somehow, that she was here! Maybe he'd been showing her how!

Maybe again, and she was too old now to believe in maybe. He'd been here, that much was certain from the rage of the Lord Marshal and the whispering amongst the Necromonger elite. Whatever had brought him, he was gone now and she was alone again.

It renewed her determination to find a way out and she watched Vaako's search for Riddick through his wife, renewing her whispers and slowly, deliberately driving the other woman to desperation.

'If I can't escape, I will take them with me.' She did not want to die but it was an oddly satisfying thought. To end these people and their perversions would be worth the spending of her life – but it would have to be perfect.

The presence of an actual prisoner came as something of a shock, but Jack had no way of approaching the strange Elemental closely enough to communicate. Not directly, anyway. Curiosity drove her on and she concentrated on the one person who might be able to find out more.

'_The Elemental knows more than she says._'

Lady Vaako walked a knife's edge, held there by equal parts ambition and frustration. Jack wanted to see her fall, fall and drag the Lord Marshal with her. She held no pity for those who had chosen this 'Necromonger Way', from the foot soldiers up through the Lord Marshal himself. Satisfaction would come when they were all dead, sent to their precious Underverse, and not before. It was not an easy plan, but it was all she had and Jack was grimly determined to see it through.

'_Find out what she knows._'

**

Concentrating on Dame Vaako, on her husband and his claim that Riddick was dead, Jack had no attention to spare for the cleansing about to take place outside the ship and little enough for events inside. Dame Vaako had brought her husband to the sticking place, and with just a little more effort….

Jack was the last to realize that something had gone horribly wrong, not just with her plan but with those of the Lord Marshal. She was late to the gathering, late to the revelation –

-but just in time to see Kyra unveil herself as one of the walking dead and to hear Riddick call her 'Jack'.

Fury and shock gripped her tightly and held her silent at the back of the crowd. How _dare_ she pretend to be Jack. How dare he _believe_ it! Kyra was wearing her name, pretending to _be_ her… and she'd gone to the Necromongers, accepted their living death and their genocide and all the horrors within.

How had she missed this, all of it going on right under her nose?

The shame of having Riddick think that Jack had become this, this creature of cowardice and bravado; someone who would turn her coat so easily, betraying not just Jack, not just Riddick, but every living person in the universe.

Rage held her still, wounded pride and a stab of vicious jealousy kept her silent and she watched the fight play out, watched Vaako take his chance, heard Dame Vaako's scream of humiliation and defeat….

She held her pose of attention as they bore the body of the Lord Marshal away, stayed at her place as the couriers drifted away and the soldiers retreated. The new Lord Marshal would need some time to adjust – and so would his people.

Riddick was left alone on his new throne, the body of the woman he'd come to save still sprawled at his feet, and it was then that Jack approached him. The weariness, the dull anger, the pain that she'd never thought to see on his face – it made things better, somehow.

She pulled off her helmet, tucked it under one arm and gave him her best glare. With one booted foot, she nudged the body between them. "You're slipping, Riddick. You didn't _really_ believe that Kyra was me, did you?"

The look of shock told her that he had, and she snorted. "Like I'd be fool enough to end up here on purpose." She nudged Kyra's body again. "Like _that_."

"Jack…." He was still staring, as if she were a hallucination.

"Let me know when you're ready to leave this lunatic asylum," she told him, raising the helmet and pulling it back on. She could feel the corners of her mouth turning up in a familiar smile, one she'd often seen on the face of the man still staring at her. It felt somehow _right_. "The food here sucks."


End file.
